Eric Zachs ’85

On the Move

Eric Zachs ’85 says he’s not a technology buff, but he admits to owning a dozen country-specific SIM cards for his cell phone, as well as a BlackBerry and an iPad. For the private venture entrepreneur, the gadgets are simply aspects of business done on the go. After all, as a managing partner of Bantry Bay Ventures-Asia, a private equity firm that invests primarily in Chinese and Vietnamese companies, Zachs travels abroad about six times a year on journeys that average 17 hours round-trip.

Zachs’ success is based largely on his ability to adapt and adjust. “When you go to different places to do business, you have to take a different level of interest, and ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do,’” he says. “If you can really understand someone’s personal motivations and motivations in business, you can develop a much stronger relationship.”

Zachs joined his family’s wireless communications company in 1989 and, over the course of six years, helped the business expand almost tenfold. When the company was bought by Vodafone in 1995, it was the largest sale of a privately held paging company in the United States.

With Bantry Bay Ventures-Asia, Zachs finances infrastructure, energy, and technology projects around the world, but his next project is taking him back to the telecommunications field. “We’re building cell phone towers in Costa Rica,” he explains. “We’ll eventually work to build towers in other parts of Central and South America, too. I’m excited, after 15 years, to be back to my core business.”